When it comes to romance between the living and the undead, zombies are a tougher sell than vampires. Gray, rotting flesh and brain-munching just aren’t as sexy as eternally young skin tone and neck-grazing.

And yet here we are with “Warm Bodies,” in theaters now, in which a zombie named R (Nicholas Hoult) falls for a human girl, Julie (Teresa Palmer). Of course, R isn’t your typical zombie. In the original young-adult novel by Isaac Marion, his inner monologue far surpasses his monosyllabic speaking capabilities.

“In my mind I am eloquent,” R says, “but when I open my mouth it all collapses. So far my personal record is four syllables.”

“The plague [that turned people into zombies] in this story is apathy, resignation and a disconnection from other people,” Marion explains. “R is a walking corpse who wants to be more than that; he’s trying to remember what it means to be alive, and I think that’s something a lot of people in modern society can relate to.”

“Warm Bodies” is just the latest and most mainstream in a trend of zombie’s-eye-view films and books, stemming perhaps from “Twilight” ennui as well as from our enduring obsession with the apocalypse and, possibly, the increasing similarities between a texting-and-walking population and a world full of reanimated corpses. Plus, seeing as how zombies are still our monster du jour — witness the enduring popularity of AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” after three seasons — it stands to reason people would begin to think about the other side of the story.

“Personifying a zombie screws with our allegiances, confuses our emotions. It narrows the gap between us and them,” says horror author David Moody, whose “Autumn” series features the undead, who experience their mental faculties improving as their bodies decay.

The author says that this idea has long colored his viewing of the genre: “Much of the horror of zombie stories for me is imagining what the dead are going through,” Moody says. “It’s easy to assume that they’re little more than dumb, reanimated husks. But what if they’re not? What if the person they used to be is still inside them, trapped within that rotting shell?”

Is our cultural fascination with zombies taking on a more complex, introspective quality? Director Kerry Prior has a somewhat more cynical take on the reason “Warm Bodies” might be getting made into a movie now. “There’s a whole new aisle in [Barnes & Noble] devoted to supernatural romance,” he points out wryly.

Prior’s low-budget zombie film “The Revenant,” which came out last summer, is also told from the perspective of the undead — in this case, a young soldier who wakes to find himself, much to his chagrin, a revenant (a zombie-like creature). But in this case, he’s not condemned to stumble blindly around the streets looking for brains. Instead, he mostly spends his time motoring around Los Angeles, negotiating the perils of picking up where he left off with his non-zombie love interest.

In 2011, directors (and brothers) Brett and Drew Pierce debuted their indie “Deadheads,” which follows a young man who wakes up zombified and decides to go on a road trip to find his still-human girlfriend.

“We loved zombies, and we hadn’t seen a sentient zombie movie,” says Brett. “We wanted to do something different.”

Though they originally intended to make it simply a zombie buddy comedy, the addition of the romantic angle yielded a major bonus: “There was this female fan base that we didn’t expect,” says Brett.

That type of fan base looks to be primed for “Warm Bodies” and for Hoult, a British actor who made a splash in 2002’s “About a Boy” and went on to portray cocky teen Tony on the UK show “Skins.” Even with pallid makeup, unearthly gray eyes and a blood-smeared mouth, the 23-year-old makes a pretty appealing undead love interest — maybe even primed to fill the void left by Robert Pattinson and the recently wrapped “Twilight” series.

“[Hoult’s] face and body language is so expressive he manages to communicate R’s inner conflict even when his narration is cracking jokes,” Marion says. “It’s not fun being a monster with a conscience; his transformation is painful and I think Nicholas pulls off the miracle of making us care about him — and yes, maybe even swoon over him — even though he’s awkward and disgusting.”